


Crossing All the Lines

by Idday



Series: I'm Not Sorry (if i'm breaking walls down) [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Original Character(s), Women in the NHL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 20:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8415652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idday/pseuds/Idday
Summary: When Kate calls her in the middle of the night from some prestigious hockey camp up in Canada, Amelie honestly thinks that somebody has died, because Kate starts with, “Oh my God,” when Amelie finally rolls over to answer her phone and then doesn’t say anything else. 
"Katie?" Amelie croaks. "What is it?"
“Oh my god, it’s… There’s an exhibition game, Amelie. Well, it’s actually a preseason game, but it’s kind of an exhibition game, because they want women to play. They want me to play! They just asked me over the phone, like, an hour ago!”“Who wants you to play,” Amelie asks cautiously, because it sounds like she means…
“It’s an NHL game, Amelie."





	1. Crossing All the Lines

**Author's Note:**

> The response to this universe has been so overwhelming and so gratifying and I promised a little sequel, so here we are!
> 
> Just as a quick little note, all the NHL teams named are pretty much because of geography. I'm really not trying to make any statements, here. There are a few real players mentioned by name, but this is in no way RPF. I also want to mention that there is some misogynistic language/opinions expressed because this fic deals with women in sports; this is obviously not my own opinion but if that might be a problem for you, please bear this in mind!
> 
> Again, thank you so much to everybody who has read and responded to this series. I love you all, and hope that this sequel is what you hoped for!!

When Kate calls her in the middle of the night from some prestigious hockey camp up in Canada, Amelie honestly thinks that somebody has died, because Kate starts with, “Oh my God,” when Amelie finally rolls over to answer her phone and then doesn’t say anything else.

“Katie?” Amelie croaks. “What is it?”

It’s August, and Providence is stifling. She almost wishes that she was in Canada, too, just because it’s almost always cooler up north.

“It’s,” Kate starts, and then stalls out again.

“Are you okay?” Amelie asks her. She’d driven Kate to the airport last week and kissed her goodbye at security and everything had seemed fine, then.

“I’m… better than I have ever been before in my life.”

“Okay,” Amelie says slowly. “That’s good, right?”

“Oh my god, it’s… There’s an exhibition game, Amelie. Well, it’s actually a preseason game, but it’s kind of an exhibition game, because they want _women_ to play. They want me to play! They just asked me over the phone, like, an hour ago!”

“Who wants you to play,” Amelie asks cautiously, because it sounds like she means…

“It’s an NHL game, Amelie. The Bruins.”

“Holy shit,” Amelie says.

“Yeah,” Kate giggles, “That’s what I said, too. They’ve recruited, like, five or six of us. It’s going to be in Boston, so I won’t have to miss school, but I would do it if it was in the fucking Sahara, because I’m going to be wearing an NHL jersey, for real.”

“That’s so great,” Amelie says warmly, and settles back into the mattress. “Okay, tell me exactly what they said to you.”

…

Amelie half expects the internet to have exploded by the morning, but apparently the news hasn’t broken yet.

Dad’s at the counter with his coffee when she finally stumbles into the kitchen. “You’re up late,” he says mildly.

“Kate called last night, pretty late,” Amelie says, finding her own mug. “We talked for a while.”

“How is she?” Dad asks, which means that he definitely doesn’t know, or he would open with that.

“Dad,” she says seriously, until he looks up from the newspaper and makes eye contact with her. “Someone from the Bruins called Kate last night. They’re putting on an exhibition game with a few women playing, and they asked her.”

His face opens warmly into a smile. “Wow,” he says, “That’s great. Kenny didn’t say anything about it the last time we talked, but that’s really great. I can remember a time when the NHL would have never dreamed of doing that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Amelie says, and shoves his shoulder gently. “You’re old, I get it. I think I was the first person Kate told, so Uncle Kent probably didn’t know, right? I mean, they would have wanted to get the players on board before they broke any news.”

“I’m not _that_ old,” Dad says. “Hey, tell Kate that we’re all really happy for her. Even if it is the Bruins.”

It’s not that he was mad when she quit hockey, or anything—not like either of her parents were—but she does wonder sometimes if he secretly wishes that she hadn’t. He never says anything about it. He seems perfectly content to coach the local juniors team and support Kate’s career from afar, and he still comes to almost all of her lacrosse games, if a little begrudgingly.

Plus, Amelie can still totally score on him when they play shinny, which she’ll never let him forget.

“Very funny, Dad,” she says, and pecks him on the cheek. “I’ll tell her.”

…

Her fathers were a little wary of her relationship with Kate when she first told them—not because of the girl thing, obviously, more because the families are so close.

“We’re not going to break up,” Amelie had insisted, and she feels strangely confident of that still. She and Kate have never seriously fought in all their years of friendship, and now, in three years of dating. It’s not that they don’t disagree, or very occasionally argue, it’s just… Amelie knows they’ll make it. She knows.

She can’t remember a time when Kate wasn’t her absolute favorite person, and it never felt like their relationship changed so much as it was a long, slow slide into intimacy; until Amelie woke up one morning still loving Kate but suddenly needing to kiss her, too, and hadn’t been surprised by it.

She spent a few futile months while Kate was in the O trying to talk herself into loving somebody else, trying to talk Kate into finding somebody else, because she had reservations, too, about ruining what they already had.

But it hadn’t worked and it had made them both miserable anyway, and so when she had said, “We’ve loved each other since we were babies, that’s never going to change,” she had meant it.

“Okay,” Dad had said, and Bitty had said, “As long as you’re happy, honey.”

And they are.

…

Kate’s worn the A for her Harvard team for a season and the C for two, has gone to the Olympics and played for the Memorial Cup, but Amelie has never seen her more nervous than when she has to suit up for the exhibition game.

She’d stayed over at Kate’s the night before and Kate was awake staring at the ceiling when Amelie had finally drifted off and was awake staring at the ceiling when Amelie woke up.

“This is like a tryout,” Kate had said, voice full of dread. “Not just for me, for, like, all women hockey players. If we mess this up, it’s going to be all the proof they ever need to never let another woman play in the NHL for the rest of our lives. For the rest of _eternity._ ”

“I think that’s a little overdramatic,” Amelie had said, but she’d rolled over to stroke Kate’s hair anyway until Kate’s big, bambi eyes had stopped looking quite so terrified.

“Hey,” Amelie says now that they’re in the hallway down under the arena, hands on both of Kate’s cheeks until Kate finally meets her eyes. “You are the best hockey player I know, bar none, and I know a lot of hockey players. You are going to get out there and you are going to kill it. You always do. You’re good at this, and more importantly, you love this. Remember that, okay? You’re going to have so much fun out there.”

Kate looks at her for a long, long moment. Behind those locker room doors are guys with decades of NHL experience; guys with big names and multi-million dollar contracts who don’t have to prove themselves.

Behind those doors are two other women who probably feel just like Kate does, right now.

“Right,” Kate says finally, and Amelie sees her transform almost in front of her—she stands up straight, shakes the fear off. When she walks into that room, she’s going to do it as someone who deserves to be there.

“Have fun, babe,” Amelie says, and Kate actually _winks_ at her.

…

Boston is in love with Kate, and Amelie is sympathetic.

She’s not a hometown girl, but she might as well be after three stellar seasons on the Harvard team, after bringing home Olympic Gold.

The exhibition was heavily advertised and Kate’s face has been hanging around town for a month, now—it’s a nice enough photoshoot, except for how all three of the women recruited for the Bruins, and probably for the Leafs, as well, although Amelie wouldn’t know since she doesn’t live in Toronto, are uncomfortably made up. Kate has a _blowout_ in her pictures, for Christ’s sake, and Amelie knows for a fact that it’s the first and probably last time that she’s ever had one.

Kate doesn’t seem to mind as much as Amelie does. She’ll suffer through almost anything to play in the NHL, including eyeliner. Amelie just thinks fair is fair, is all. If the girls have to wear heels and a tight skirt with their jerseys and strike an uncomfortable looking pose with their sticks, the guys should have to, like, go shirtless or something. Equality.

It doesn’t matter in the end, though, because the arena lights up when Kate steps on the ice. She scores a goal ten minutes in, and the place goes crazy for her, and her second goal comes not five minutes later.

Amelie can practically see the moment in the second period when every player in black decides that they’re going to get Kate the hat trick if it kills them—she starts pulling long shifts, puck seemingly always on her stick, and when she finally puts it in the net late in the third, it feels like the sky is falling.

Kate leans down and scoops up a hat, waves it at the crowd. She might be tearing up, it’s hard to tell from up in the stands—Uncle Kent definitely is tearing up, even though he’s trying unsuccessfully to hide it.

Every guy on the bench pats her on the helmet like one of their own, and it’s almost enough to make Amelie cry, too.

…

There’s an insane amount of press surrounding the game, of course, people bitching about it before and people bitching about it after.

Amelie reads almost none of it. Kate gives her one of the hats she carried off the ice—it’s an old Red Sox cap and Amelie has no idea who it came from and she doesn’t care, because it’s _Kate’s_ now. It means something. It belongs to a girl who’s probably going to be on the front cover of a magazine, soon, but who right now is grinning into Amelie’s neck.

She might have this hat framed, or dipped in gold, or something. It feels that important.

…

Kate is studying languages, because she wants to work in hockey and that means talking to players from Europe. Of course, she had a head start going into the program, because she already spoke three languages (two and a half, Amelie maintains—her French is atrocious).

Amelie’s going into sports journalism, because she really likes to talk about sports.

“Plus,” Kate pointed out, “You have a really good face for TV. It’s like… a really, really good face.”

Kate’s dream is not to work in the front office somewhere. Her dream is to _play hockey_ , and it kills Amelie that Kate might have to settle because the world isn’t quite ready for her, that Kate will have to take whatever hockey job she can get off the ice because being near the show is better than not being there at all.

…

Amelie loves the gold medal hanging on Kate’s wall, mostly because she still remembers every moment of that week—how she’d skipped her classes to fly to Russia because none of their dads could go.

How Kate had strutted into Moscow wearing an A, had snatched the gold medal right out from under Team Russia’s nose with her goal in the third period, four minutes left on the clock.

Amelie had met Kate’s grandparents—the Russian ones—for the first time. They’d sat next to Amelie at every one of Kate’s games, all of them wearing her jersey. Kate had teared up the first time she’d seen her dedushka and babushka wearing American jerseys, a not insignificant act of rebellion on behalf of their granddaughter.

Kate had been wearing her medal, wrapped in an American flag, when a reporter had asked her what the win meant.

“It means everything,” she had said firmly, “And this medal is for my dads, too. They introduced me to hockey and they encouraged me to always be my best and taught me what love really looks like and I wouldn’t be here without either one of them. Love you, Dad. Love you, Papa.”

And then she’d said it again in Russian, just so nobody could miss it.

…

One of Amelie’s teammates tells her that Kate’s on the porch of the lax house one Thursday night in January. It’s not surprising for Kate to visit, but she usually tells Amelie that she’s coming, usually comes to stay for the weekend instead of driving over just for the night.

Amelie goes downstairs in her underwear and one of the Harvard sweatshirts that she stole from Kate, sometime last year. Not like her teammates haven’t seen her in less.

Or Kate, obviously.

Kate’s trembling on the doorstep, but not like she’s cold or scared. Like she’s… electric.

Like if Amelie touched her right now, the world might burn.

“Katie?” She asks, and Kate holds out a piece of paper to her.

“It’s an offer,” she whispers, “From New York.”

“That’s great, Katie,” Amelie says, and tries to pull her inside, because it’s below freezing and Amelie’s not wearing pants and Kate’s in a ratty sweater and no coat. “The Riveters are a great team.”

“Not them,” Kate says, still on the porch. “It’s the Rangers, Amelie. The Rangers want me.”

For a moment, there’s nothing but the absolute stillness of a frozen night, and then Amelie is laughing out loud, clutching Kate close to her. The NHL, Kate means. The NHL wants her, wants a _woman,_ for more than one game, and they’ve both been waiting for this since they first stepped onto the ice, so many years ago.

“Katie,” Amelie whispers into her hair, because there’s nothing else to say. They both know.

…

“What if someone else offers you more,” Amelie wonders into Kate’s hip, sweaty and sated, the paper carefully laid out on her desk across the room.

Kate snorts.

“No, really. Like, what if word gets out that they’re trying to sign you and then, like, Vancouver offers you twice as much money or something?”

Kate’s abs tense up when she laughs, and Amelie has to reach out and touch her then, like she might die if she can’t. Her girlfriend has actual abs.

Her girlfriend is going to play in the actual NHL.

“I think one NHL team is enough for me,” Kate says drily, and it’s… a year ago, people were saying that women playing in one exhibition game was going to destroy the game, and now Kate has a contract.

They have no choice but to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

…

Amelie isn’t wrong—in the next few weeks, two more teams offer Kate the chance to at least skate at their training camps.

“I’m going to have to get an agent,” she says, slightly stunned.

It’s New York in the end, though, and Amelie’s not surprised. They were the first to offer a contract to Kate, to believe in her enough to try, and that means something.

They’re original six, which means something to Kate, too, though she won’t say it out loud.

“Plus,” Kate adds, curled around her in bed, “I feel like I might know somebody who’s about to start working for ESPN in the fall. You know, in New York.”

Amelie blushes. “It’s just an internship.”

“Still,” Kate says. “Maybe you can convince them to finally start caring about hockey, huh?”

…

People have a lot to say about Kate, of course, and not all of it’s bad.

All of it is followed by a ‘but,’ though.

_She easily kept up with men back in the O… but._

_She put up record points as captain of her college team… but._

_She scored the Gold Medal winning goal at the last Olympics… but._

But she’s a woman.

The media asks every hockey player they can their hands on, past, present, and future—seriously, people are asking kids in the CHL and Amelie has to feel for them, not even able to legally vote and asked about this controversial signing. That’s the word that sportscasters keep using—controversial.

They ask Jonathan Toews and Alex Ovechkin and Wayne Gretzky. They ask Manon Rheaume and Hilary Knight and Kate’s Olympic captain. They ask both of Kate’s dads, which is pretty stupid because they’re obviously not going to say anything bad about their own daughter. Bitty and Grandma tell Amelie that they keep calling to ask Dad and Grandpa Bob, too, which is almost as stupid because they’re Kate’s in-laws in everything but name.

Amelie doesn’t think there’s a single active NHL player who hasn’t been asked: “So how do you feel about playing with Kate Parson?”

There has to be a team of PR people working their asses off, somewhere, because most of them stick to a party line—good player, deserves to be here. Yes, it will be interesting to watch her season. No, it won’t change the way we play their team.

The Bruins forward who assisted on Kate’s last goal in the exhibition game—a _hat trick_ in her NHL debut, Amelie keeps telling people, like hell she doesn’t deserve this shot—gives a fairly impassioned defense of her game, says she’s one of the most naturally talented players he’s seen in a long time, and is immediately accused of sleeping with Kate. The guy’s wife just tweets out three laughing faces.

Kate’s old liney, Zach Bone, has been wearing the A for Chicago for three years, and when a fan tweets at him about it, he posts a picture of Kate holding the Memorial Cup and another of her holding a Gold Medal and then a twelve-part breakdown of Kate’s strengths as a player.

The point is, everybody gets asked about Kate Parson playing in the NHL, except for Kate Parson.

But that’s okay, Amelie thinks. She doesn’t need to tell them that she belongs—she’s going to show them, instead.

…

They don’t get a place together in New York, right away.

Kate’s old billet brother, Max, was traded to the Rangers a few years back and he offers Kate his guest room—it will be good for her, Amelie thinks, to be close to the team like that. It’s normal, for players breaking into the NHL to have a roommate on the team.

Kate worries that Amelie will be mad that she’s moving in with someone else, or so she says. Really, Amelie’s pretty sure that Kate’s worried that things won’t work out with the team, but she can’t say so out loud.

“It’s only one season,” Amelie tells her. “We’ve lived in separate cities for five years, now, we’ll be fine. It’s not like you can’t still come over whenever you want.”

Amelie is intimately familiar with the intensity of an NHL schedule, and this is what she tells Kate. She can still remember all the nights Bitty put her to bed alone, when Dad was gone. She knows what she’s getting into. She’ll have a job of her own to keep her busy.

She can handle this.

…

The front office is pretty good at handling all the little things that come up when there’s a woman on the team, or so Kate tells her. They put a shower curtain up in the locker room and make sure there’s a toilet with a door that closes. Her stall is tucked into a corner, partly for the illusion of privacy, partly because they know she’s going to get huge media scrums and don’t want to clog up the dressing room. The guys are handling the shift pretty well, all things considered. It’s only…

“They tried to make me wear lipstick in this picture,” Kate says. “Like, okay, I can handle a little mascara, or whatever. But lipstick, really? It’s for the official roster. I’m not supposed to look _pretty._ I’m supposed to look like a hockey player. And then they were all, ‘smile, Kate, smile!’ None of the guys have to smile in their pictures, they all look all mean and tough. So I tried not to smile, but then I couldn’t help it in the end because I was just, like, really happy that they had a jersey with my name on it, so I’m pretty sure I’m smiling in it anyway.”

It’s a nice picture, it turns out, and Kate is smiling in it—she looks almost sunny, deceptively sweet, impossibly happy.

It’s a picture that’s going to go in history books, Amelie knows. It’s a good picture.

There’s no lipstick.

…

There are cameras pointed at Kate 24/7, it seems, and sometimes Amelie is in front of them, too. It’s strange, to be in the studio when five old men in suits are discussing your girlfriend’s career, in any of the brief moments they actually spend talking about hockey, but it’s worth it when Amelie gets a word in edgewise to defend her.

Because she does truly believe that Kate can do it. She believes that she can not only make the team, but can thrive there, and she gives anyone who disagrees with her a few months to watch Kate play before they change their minds.

Kate doesn’t worry about her media like Amelie does—she worries about making the roster out of camp. The Schooners signed a girl, too, about a week after the news about Kate broke, but it looks like she’ll be playing in the AHL for at least a year.

Kate won’t accept that, Amelie knows. She’s going to play in the NHL if it kills her. She’s never been very gracious about accepting second place.

The first pre-season game, every camera in the place is on Kate’s face as she walks into the building. Amelie had taken her to get a new suit fitted last week, and it fits her perfectly. She’s not glammed up, but she let somebody in PR put a little makeup on her face for the cameras, let Amelie talk her into a pair of pumps mostly to mess with sportscasters who keep calling her too feminine to play in the big leagues.

When Amelie kissed her goodbye a half hour ago, her eyes were wide and her breath was coming too quickly and Max had to half herd her out the door. Now, she’s the picture of confidence, headphones on and heels clicking. Just before she pushes in the door—of _Madison Square Garden_ —she looks straight into the camera closest to her and allows her mouth to slide into a smirk.

Amelie watches that video over and over. _Just watch me,_ Kate’s face says, _I dare you._

When the sportscasters say ‘but’ from then on, Amelie thinks of that smirk.

_She’s a good player, but…_

Kate lights the goal lamp in the second period, and the crowd makes so much noise the building shakes with it. The cameras focus on her face again, and she looks euphoric.

Earlier, she looked professional, beautiful, but this is Amelie’s favorite Kate: powerful, fierce, a little wild.

Kate makes the regular roster, and nobody’s surprised.

…

They don’t talk about coming out, because as far as they’re both concerned, they _are_ out.

Their parents know, their teammates always have—which is why it takes them both by surprise when the first article comes out speculating about Kate and Max.

“This is really gross,” Kate says over their kitchen table. “No offense, dude.”

“I was there for your bad teenage haircut stage, Kate,” Max says, and doesn’t even look up from his phone. “This is pretty gross.”

After a few weeks of flat denial from the both of them, the rumors stop—but only because then it’s Sasha, one of the rookie defensemen, that Kate’s supposedly madly in love with. It’s objectively a little funny, because he’s about twice Kate’s size and speaks hardly any English, which is the reason that they’re close in the first place, and so when reporters ask him about Kate, she’s the one who has to do the translating for him.

“He says his girlfriend back in Russia is not happy about these rumors,” she says bluntly. “Plus, I’m too old for him.”

“What if we just… like, started making out in front of people?” Kate asks Amelie on one of the rare nights they’re home together and in bed before midnight. She looks tired, worn down from half a hard season, and Amelie has never found her more beautiful. She reaches over to brush one of Kate’s sandy curls out of her face—Amelie had once spent an entire summer and about thirteen heat tools trying to replicate her tousled, perfect wave before she’d finally been forced to admit defeat.

“We can do that,” Amelie agrees.

“The guys are all going to be jealous that my girlfriend is hotter than theirs,” Kate muses sleepily.

“I’m a WAG,” Amelie sighs. “I never thought my life would come to this.”

“You’re a highly respected sports journalist,” Kate mumbles.

“Not yet,” Amelie says.

“You will be. We’re like, totally a power couple, babe.”

“Totally,” Amelie says fondly, but Kate’s already drifted off.

…

Amelie’s watched a lot of hockey games in her life, but sitting in the family box at an NHL arena never gets old. She doesn’t make it to as many games as she’d like, because even when she’s not working, the Rangers are on the road half the time, but she’s glad she’s here for this one—Kate’s on a hot streak and tonight feels like her night, somehow.

“Your girl’s good,” Trish says after Kate’s first goal of the night, two minutes left in the first. Amelie had been as wary of the other girlfriends at first as Kate had been of her teammates, both of them unsure how well their presence would be accepted. It’s a nice group, though. Amelie likes them all, and they all seem to like Kate, which is the most important thing. They get invited to all of the team barbecues and dinners and parties and none of the girls ever say anything about how Kate regularly sees their partners buck naked.

Which, Amelie never says anything to the guys about how they see _her_ partner buck naked, so fair is fair.

“Yeah,” Amelie agrees, because she _is_ good. People keep asking her to go on talk shows and throw first pitches and sponsor their makeup brands, but Kate’s best at this, happiest at this, when she’s just playing hockey. There are a lot of parts of the job that Kate doesn’t like much: the constant travel, the publicity, the horrible fans. She’d probably sign autographs all day for little girls, but she also has to sign them for guys who call her a cunt online a few hours later.

But this part makes up for it, Amelie thinks. Kate scores her second goal of the game, wrister, top shelf, and Amelie watches her face on the jumbotron as she grins and Max pats her on the ass—“Is that sort of thing considered sexual harassment?” A news anchor had asked last week, and Kate had grumbled, “No, but that dude from the Flames who called me a bitch on the ice and then DMed me asking for nudes an hour later was”—and Amelie knows that this is what Kate was made for.

It’s March and there’s eleven minutes left in the third and Kate Parson gets her first hat trick in a Rangers jersey and they’re at home and she can barely skate because of the hats on the ice. She scoops one up, waves it at the crowd, bows a little cheekily.

Trish hugs Amelie up in the box, and neither of them can stop smiling.

There aren’t many moments that Amelie wishes she still played hockey seriously. She knows she wasn’t meant for this like Kate was. Still, she sometimes wishes she could be down there on the ice, too, could get to Kate first in moments like this and scream in her face like Kate’s entire team is doing now.

But watching her do it is good enough.

There are cameras everywhere after the game, because there always are, and when Amelie finds Kate, she can feel the eyes of the world on them.

“Good game,” Amelie tells her uselessly, as if that’s enough to encompass what she feels like, watching Kate play.

“Hey,” Kate says back, and settles on of the caps New York had thrown for her backwards on Amelie’s head. She pulls her in slowly enough that Amelie sees it coming, that she could have time to pull away if she wanted.

She doesn’t want to pull away. She’s wearing Kate’s jersey and Kate’s hat and Kate’s in her suit and her cheeks are still flushed from the game, and she really, really just wants to kiss her in spite of the cameras.

Because of the cameras.

The world doesn’t stop when they kiss—the room doesn’t even go silent. Hell, half the people here probably already know. They’ve never hidden it.

But Amelie wants to flaunt it a little, sometimes. She’s got an incredible girlfriend, and she’s allowed to be proud of that.

“C’mon,” Kate says, when they finally pull apart. “Let’s go home.”


	2. Deleted Scenes and Happy Thoughts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep having little thoughts from this universe that aren't really big enough to be a story but that are fun to think about. Thought I'd share!!

Kent and Alexei have Kate’s game worn Bruins jersey framed in their living room next to both of their first NHL jerseys. She definitely teases them both that she’s played with not one, but two, Original Six teams, but neither one of them ever did.

All six women who play in the exhibition game take a selfie together before the puck drops even though they’re wearing different jerseys. It goes viral.

Kate’s twitter account is just pictures of her with little girls who are wearing her jersey and locker room quotes without context.

When Jack attends Kate’s first game, it’s the only time he ever willingly wears either a Bruins jersey or one with the name ‘Parson’ across the back.

Boner asks Kate to sign the puck he scores on her team with the first time they play each other. It’s very embarrassing for all concerned. She does it anyway, obviously.

The first time Amelie ever visits the Haus, it’s because Kate is friends with some of the hockey bros. She and her teammates hang out with the lax team more often than not; her dads definitely lie awake at night and think, _what did we do wrong?_

Kate wears number 97 because of her dads. Somebody once asks her if it’s because of Connor McDavid, and she says, “Um, no, why would it be?” and then tweets him an apology when the interview starts playing everywhere. He tells a reporter afterwards that if they ever retire the number league-wide, it’s going to be because Kate wore it. She has no response for that.

Max is totally smitten with one of Kate’s USA teammates who comes over all the time because she plays for the Riveters. Max and Amelie watch the Women’s World Championships together, and Max just says weakly, “Oh my God,” when this girl puts one away. “I know,” Amelie says, and pats his knee.

They’re out to dinner one night after Amelie gets her own segment on ESPN and someone approaches their table and asks for an autograph—Kate says, “yeah, sure,” and pulls out a sharpie and the woman has to explain that she actually meant Amelie. Amelie never lets her forget that.

After graduating, Kate speaks four languages and is passable in two others. Her favorite thing to do with this information is keep quiet until she scores on someone and then brutally chirp them in their native language. This is especially effective with the Russians, because her Papa taught her all the best insults.

Kate and Max get into an ugly picture war after he tweets one of her drooling on his shoulder on the plane to Vancouver. Unfortunately, many of their ugliest pictures are from the O and feature both of them. Even more unfortunately, their old teammates remember all of these pictures and are more than happy to contribute to a good cause.

The Aces and the Falconers once spent two days tweeting at each other about whose legacy Kate is—finally she has to tweet them both a photo of her Rangers jersey and an eye roll emoji.

Kate is technically the first player to have both parents precede her in the NHL.

When the Schooners finally call their player up from the AHL, Kate is the first to tweet congratulations at her. They make a club, and as more and more female players start to trickle into the league, they all get invited to join the group chat.


End file.
